Nicola Griffith - Always

Underground parking garages, like the interior of submarines, are malevolent in their ugliness and lack of human comfort, in their machine-oil smell, their lack of natural light, their sense of confinement. I parked on the lowest tier, and walked to the elevator.

I waited twenty minutes. Then the elevator light dinged, and Corning stepped out.

“Good morning,” I said.

She dropped her purse and backed up against the cinder-block wall. I picked it up, weighed it, remembering another woman and another bag, opened it, looked inside, checked to make sure there were no obvious weapons in hidden compartments, and gave it back.

She hadn’t been sleeping well, clearly. And possibly someone had cut out her tongue.

I pondered that. You would need to hold the tongue with gauze, otherwise it would slip from your grip. I tried to remember if there was any bone at the base of the soft tissue. The tendons might prove difficult, if one were to use a small blade.

But I needed her willing and able to talk.

“You have an appointment with a reporter at the Seattle Times. Her name is Mindy Leptke. You will tell her everything about your land scheme, and she will quote you as an anonymous source.” She stared at me, mute. “Do you understand?”

She held her purse in front of her stomach with both hands.

“Do you understand?” Nod. “I won’t prosecute on three conditions: One, cooperate fully. Two, agree to pay one hundred thousand dollars to Hippoworks. Three, allow your real estate license to lapse in the state of Washington.”

Run, I thought, squeal. Give me an excuse.

“But it must be full cooperation: every name, every meeting. Your statement will be recorded. Leptke will keep one copy, I’ll have the other.”

She blinked like a semaphore.

“You will pay your hotel bill, and return with me to Seattle. You will arrange for a certified check for one hundred thousand dollars as soon as the banks open. We will go to the Times offices.”

She kneaded her bag. It had a blackish smear across the left side where it had fallen on the tire-striped concrete. “I don’t have a hundred thousand dollars.”

That was true. But her condo was worth many times that.

“Sell your condo.”

“But it takes time, it—”

“You know a lot of people in the real estate business. Someone will be happy, as a personal favor to you, to give you fifty cents on the dollar in exchange for expediency.”

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this to me.”

“Because it’s more polite than tearing you limb from limb in a parking lot. But I could do it that way if you’d prefer.”

9:42. I SATwith Corning in the Times reception area. Every time I moved slightly, the cashier’s check rustled in my breast pocket.

I PULLED INTOthe warehouse parking lot. My phone said 10:58. I turned the ring volume up.

Dornan was sitting on one of the old couches by the craft-services table, leaning forward and talking to Peg and Joel. His hair was sticking up in a tuft and he wore a white T-shirt with a cartoon palm tree on the front.

He stood as soon as he saw me.

“Why aren’t you with her?”

“She wouldn’t let me,” I said.

I expected him to demand how, exactly, she’d stopped me when I outweighed her by thirty pounds and topped her by five inches, but his arms half lifted, twitched as he began to hold them out to me, then thought better of it, and returned to his side. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This must be… You must be having all sorts of bad memories.”

I nodded.

“But this is—She’s not dying, Aud. Remember that.”

So fragile, like that thin sheet of canvas in the gallery daubed with pigment, and something was hacking holes in it. Lesions. Christ.

“She is not,” he said again. “It’ll be nothing. Well, not nothing, but you’ll see.”

I looked at my phone. 11:06. I wanted to shake it to make sure it was still working.

“You’ll see,” he said again.

I stared at him. “You think you know what this is, don’t you?”

“I… No, no. I don’t want to say. It’s just speculation, and we’ll know soon enough.”

He ran his hand through his hair, and tugged on it. “What time is it?” “Eleven-oh-eight.” He nodded. Perhaps he was imagining, like me, Kick sitting alone in a cold waiting room. “Do you know what doctor she’s seeing?”

He shook his head, ran his hand through his hair again, tugged.

Standing here wouldn’t get anything done. “If she calls”—if she calls you first, if she doesn’t call me at all—“I’ll be with Rusen and Finkel.” He nodded vaguely, raised his hand to his hair. “And, Dornan, try not to snatch yourself bald.”

He dredged up a smile.

11:10. No reply to my knock at the editing trailer. 11:11. My knock on the other trailer was answered promptly.

The trailer was very neat, which meant Rusen was being obsessive again. Their office chairs were next to each other, in front of a screen full of spreadsheets. A lot of the figures were in red. Finkel folded his glasses and put them in his top pocket. His eyes, too, were rimmed in red.

Rusen, tie knotted more tightly than usual, fussed with finding me a chair. Finkel chatted about the wonderful weather, his jovial voice at odds with his haggard face.

“That medical-insurance issue you raised is dealt with,” Rusen said. “Effective midnight yesterday.”

“Thank you. How are preparations coming along for the final scenes?”

“Wonderful,” Finkel said.

“A little tricky,” Rusen said.

I waited.

“We’re in trouble. We need more film stock, the film processor wants us to cover our expenses so far, the equipment rental place says we owe them a premium for the overage on camera and rolling stock lease, the city just sent the electricity bill, which is twice what we’d budgeted, mainly because of the air-conditioning, and now we have a lawsuit on our hands.”

“A lawsuit.” Petty problems. 11:18. How long did doctor’s appointments usually take?

“One of the grips had a flashback at home and acted crazy enough to scare his wife. She’s suing us for the resulting emotional distress.”

Flashback. “Did he hurt her?”

“Hurt her?” He seemed surprised. “No. According to the papers filed, he and his wife were having a barbecue for friends, and his wife was opening a can of beans when he starts saying, God’s brains are spilled. Anyhoo, their barbecue was ruined.”

“It’s a pure nuisance suit,” Finkel said. “We’d sue her right back, but we couldn’t cover the attorneys’ fees.”

I took Corning’s check from my pocket and slid it across the table to Finkel. “This will help.”

He opened it, studied it judiciously for a moment, then took out his glasses, fitted them to his nose, and looked again. He turned the check over, and back, then passed it with a frown to Rusen.

Rusen looked at the check, looked at me, looked at the check again. “Is it real?”

I nodded. “Payment from the person behind all your troubles in the last month or so. Appeasement. I said we wouldn’t sue her.”

“You’ve got no right to make that decision for this company,” Finkel said.

I looked at him for a moment. “I do. As of ten-thirty last night, when I signed the papers. Here’s my investment.” I slid another check to Rusen. This one was much bigger. “If you disagree, tear up the check.”

Rusen covered it protectively with his hands.

In addition to the frown, Finkel’s chin now jutted forward two or three inches. It would be very easy to break it. Rusen beamed at him determinedly. “Boy howdy, this is like a miracle.”